Introduction

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face dual climate and economic crises1,2,3. Climate resilient development (CRD) presents an opportunity for SIDS to systematically integrate climate adaptation and mitigation into development decisions that protects economic and social well-being4. However, education capacity building continues to be rarely prioritized within climate action in general. This is a critical gap as education plays a key role in building societal capacity to learn and adapt to a rapidly changing climate5.

This commentary argues that since insufficient attention has been paid to climate education capacity, much remains to be known about how to enhance existing knowledge, new skill development, and enhanced educational resources to sustain a CRD transition for civil society. To showcase this value, we present lessons learned from education stakeholder engagements as part of the Climate Smart Cities Grenada project, funded by the Green Climate Fund. The goal of the project was to understand how to build local capacity to respond and prepare for disasters in the long-term through education and training. We undertook co-generative stakeholder engagements with technical experts, civil society organizations and members of government ministries to identify critical interventions for educational capacity building to not only support climate policy, but to also create green economic opportunities for Grenadian society.

Education capacity building needs for SIDS

Capacity building and training foster climate resilient communities and economies6. In the past 25 years, SIDS have been actively building capacity for CRD planning through training focused on mainstreaming practices7. These initiatives have focused on building institutional capacity to integrate climate adaptation practices into development planning, relying on public awareness campaigns, knowledge exchange and economic vulnerability assessments8. Capacity building through these programs have included constructing legislative, policy and planning frameworks to integrate adaptation across different sectors (e.g., agriculture, tourism, water, electricity, economic development). Various climate financing and development initiatives have supported these programs by expanding expertise and technical assistance for hazards and risk monitoring across the region9. These capacity building initiatives have prioritized building fiscal and governmental capacity to harness climate financing10. These efforts heretofore lacked attention to educational initiatives that engage local perspectives on local socio-environmental issues11. Furthermore, education capacity building remains disconnected from CRD, forming a critical obstacle in the long-term sustainability of climate-related fiscal and governmental activities.

Education capacity building seeks to develop the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and resources necessary for individuals and organizations to adapt to changing climatic and economic conditions12. While some Caribbean SIDS are undertaking elements of CRD education capacity building, programs typically focus on one type of organizational group (e.g., Barbados climate change education program for private sector)13 or region-wide green economy activities (See Annex A). Subsequently, a need remains to improve human resource capacity building for local SIDS governments to maintain and advance CRD approaches 2,14. Therefore, education capacity building in the Caribbean requires interventions that create and maintain local expertise 15,16.

Co-generation for education capacity building

After review of national and regional climate adaptation plans and programs, and public awareness campaigns, we interviewed 39 individuals across the governmental ministries, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations to gauge the state of educational opportunities for CRD. Interview participants were selected through government ministry consultations, and snowball sampling to capture civil society, governmental, education, and non-governmental organizations involved in climate and education initiatives. These perspectives were integrated into workshops designed to exchange information and share regional experiences on critical issues related to climate risk and development17.

Three workshops were conducted with technical experts, civil society organizations and members of government ministries (Education and Human Resource Development, Ministry of Labor, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, T. A. Marryshow Community College (TAMCC), National Climate Change Committee (CCCCC), Interagency Group of Development Organizations). A total of 47 individuals attended the workshops. The in-person workshops were held on February 4th and 6th, 2019 and May 14, 2019, with some follow-up discussions in 2020 (the COVID pandemic significantly slowed the development of this paper. All results and findings have been recently vetted in 2025 by the authors). Workshop participants included individuals from the initial interviews as well as additional stakeholders recommended through government ministry contacts. During the workshops, participants were asked to interact with each other through dialog to produce a solution to or perspective on a problem. We conducted co-generation activities to construct critical interventions, which requires scientists and local communities to question how local needs align with scientific framings and vice-versa to identify needs and develop relevant responses18.

On the first day of the workshop, facilitators presented an outline and posed three problem areas for participants to address: (1) defining the scope of green development and capacity building in the Grenadian context; (2) identifying critical interventions that would address capacity building while incorporating local contexts; and (3) developing case studies to demonstrate proof of concept. From this dialog, stakeholders identified six critical interventions. Facilitators synthesized participant discussions using thematic coding to organize contributions into needs and responses for each critical intervention. Facilitators organized discussions into thematic areas including background and definitions, educational settings and climate change, and key issues for education and green development.

On the second day of workshops, facilitators discussed with stakeholders an analysis of day 1 workshop dialog, and presented potential educational opportunities. Final discussions included comments on a straw-person diagram that illustrated the case studies within education settings and scales of engagements, with stakeholder comments centered around altering the scales at which the case study projects could be implemented. Workshop discussions were documented through facilitator notes, which were synthesized into workshop reports. Below, we present key interventions defined in the workshop and how they foster capacity building in a SIDS context.

Critical interventions for education, skills, and training development

The workshops reinforced the need to promote education, skills, and training development across multiple sectors and different education settings. Participants defined increasing local education capacity as expanding the knowledge of Grenadian society on local climate, environment, and risks, which in turn allows Grenadian society to sustainably manage the local environment and build economic opportunities within the country. These discussions formulated three sets of integrated projects to be discussed below: field-based experiential learning initiative, climate web portal, and CRD monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system.

Field-based, experiential learning and vocational curriculum

The lack of investment in education capacity building regarding local climate, environment and risk perpetuates Grenada’s reliance on outside expertise regarding disaster risk reduction, adaptation, and mitigation measures. Participants expressed that consultations are not only a costly economic endeavor for the country, but it also continues to provide limited opportunities for Grenadians to be a part of the climate decision-making process. As one participant mentioned, “[a] culture of continuous learning needs to become prominent.” Creating a field-based, experiential learning and vocational curriculum allows Grenadians to engage with local data collection on environment and climate, adding to public trust and legitimacy for climate risk, and hazards information. Specifically, participants found that the pursuit of CRD requires a range of professionalization activities that could match a set of continuing employment requirements and address skill gaps present in the country.

A field-based, experiential learning and vocational intervention would generate a set of defined products, and greater coherence across the differential educational settings that include primary/secondary, vocational, and continuing education. Participants identified case studies to illustrate how to implement critical interventions and demonstrate how capacity building can occur for green development. Specifically, participants developed three case studies to fill in skill gaps they observed across the individual, household, community, and sector scales of engagement: (1) Energy efficient lighting to link with emerging initiatives that introduce highly efficient bulbs and lighting throughout the country. (2) Buildings and construction that respond to growing concern about building standards in high hazard/risk sites (e.g., high slope locations, high wind vulnerable settings) and (3) Disaster risk reduction and public health preparation that connect with growing concern regarding emergency response capacity (e.g., evacuation, building protection, post- event disease prevention and monitoring) at the individual, household, and community level. Greatest opportunities for primary/secondary curriculum, targeted vocational/technical training and continuing education. These case studies were identified by participants as filling the most urgent skills gaps present in the country, while connecting with emerging initiatives and present concerns for climate resilience building.

Climate resilient development monitoring & evaluation system

A CRD M&E system is a collection of metrics that can measure progress on green economic transitions, including tracking climate vulnerability, social infrastructure, energy, waste and water management systems, and communication, and assess growing concerns like water quality decline, urban heat island effects, and extreme heat. Workshop participant groups identified that the Ministry of Climate Resilience, the Environment, and Renewable Energy could potentially lead coastal and environmental monitoring, with enhanced capacity needed in Forestry and Fisheries divisions. It was also identified that the M&E system would require inter-agency coordination across existing data collectors including the Ministries of Agriculture, Health, and Finance, the Grenada Meteorological Office, the National Water and Sewage Authority (NAWASA), and the Central Statistical Office. Participants expressed that a robust M&E system building from existing current monitoring infrastructure while filling in gaps is critical for flexible climate resilience planning. Identifying indicators promoted debates among the participants about what an M&E system should measure and why.

Participants felt that the long-term viability of the system would be dependent on data/information collected by a variety of users and as appropriate synced with data/information in the web portal. In these conversations, participants acknowledged common challenges in SIDS data systems, including limited access to existing data across ministries, data gaps for key indicators such as water withdrawal and groundwater reserves, and constraints on technical staff capacity specifically in Forestry and Fisheries. The M&E system would address these challenges by centralizing data access, establishing clear protocols for inter-agency data sharing, and citizen science programs to supplement government monitoring capacity. Empirical measurements would provide a vehicle for effective climate risk management. Contributors expressed that the M&E system should directly build from the existing environmental monitoring structure and protocols in Grenada as well as identify and fill monitoring gaps to current and potential future resiliency needs (Table 1).

Table 1 Participant defined elements of the CRD M&E System
Full size table

Climate data knowledge portal

The workshop also designed specifications for a climate data knowledge portal. The portal would include a website that displays data and information on CRD accounting and data, vulnerability mapping, published and gray literature reports, educational resources, health, and disaster risk reduction monitoring. Due to the broad scope of the proposed portal, comments during the workshop suggested a staged rollout approach for implementation. Participants recommended developing and testing a beta version of the web portal. Priority would be given to core features such as climate data, disaster monitoring information, and educational resources in an initial phase, and then expansion to additional categories. Data held in a web portal would help create a cohesive data repository across the different government ministries. This can include physical datasets such as geographic and environmental profiles of Grenada, communication about local education, as well as reports on trends in climate issues, sustainable development, and hazards at regional, national, and international scales. The website would serve as a repository for the M&E system and data where primary, secondary, and vocational education students, teachers, and community groups could be users as well as data collectors.

Participants viewed the climate data knowledge portal as expanding access to learning, training, data, and information on local environment and climate trends, and defined key data, users, market, and information interests for the portal. It could be used for green economic capacity building, ensure a range of modalities to facilitate intra- and inter-agency collaboration, and international/regional partnerships and networking. Discussions on the portal emphasized that it should be available to the public as well as to practitioners and policymakers. In this way, participants recognized that varying skill levels would be required to utilize portal data information. In these discussions, digital literacy, access challenges and training needs were identified as common challenges for SIDS generally. Therefore, participants identified training in these areas as needed for community uptake of the portal. In these discussions, participants mentioned that the portal would be able to accommodate a diverse user group through different levels of access, with user-friendly interfaces for the general public, and technical components for practitioners.

Participants identified the need for “champions” to provide guidance and advocate for the significance of climate information to communities and decision-makers within country and across the region. Potential champions identified could include members of ministries, civil society organizations, different vocational industry representatives and educators. Based on workshop discussions regarding retention challenges facing trained professionals in SIDS, supporting champions would require formal recognition of their roles, including integration into existing professional responsibilities.

Discussion and conclusion

The evaluation of different educational opportunities to counter development and climate challenges present valuable insights that SIDS can draw upon to design CRD education capacity building initiatives. First, building human capacity to sustain adaptation is needed across the region to coordinate and implement climate policy in the long-term19. Specifically, education capacity building creates less reliance on external financing organizations to provide scientific/training expertise and climate services20,21. In addition, building local education capacity can maximize engagement between local populations and national governments to shape national climate policies and disaster response16,22.

Second, education capacity building for CRD goals should engage meaningfully across the individual/household, community, and institutional/sector levels. Currently, many SIDS lack formal mechanisms that integrate local knowledge, concerns and needs into adaptation planning23. This limits the possibility for critical thinking on how each engagement connects with each other to create social cohesion for CRD pathways. The learning curriculum proposed here offers one avenue to achieve this ambition. Field-based learning and similar experiential learning activities would serve to fill a critical need in the region where the lack of educational capacity across different scales is hindering the sustainability of climate actions24.

Third, the lack of climate M&E systems across the region pose issues for CRD model replication between Caribbean countries25. The workshops help define the value of a nation-wide M&E system that could produce progress tracking models and address critical communication challenges. Workshop participants expressed communication challenges between ministries due to inaccessible mechanisms for sharing, with one participant noting, “In Grenada, everything is confidential. No institutional knowledge”. Another participant observed that “decision-makers and policymakers are not benefitting from expertise…within the public sector”. The nation-wide M&E system would help achieve one of the biggest needs for CRD: to have government ministries and sectors regularly and effectively communicating with each other across training and implementation of CRD-related projects.

Last, enhancing education capacity building can fulfill a long-standing lack of localized data across Caribbean SIDS (Benjamin and Thomas26). While the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC) provides a comprehensive data portal for climate policy information and climate financing projects across the region, there is a lack of comprehensive, locally run portals7. Nationally maintained data/knowledge portals are websites that can provide learning and training for the general population in using different data and information sources. At the same time, many SIDS digital platforms can become outdated without dedicated staffing or funding27. Participants identified building in sustainability from the outset, where local students and talent would be involved in portal development and construction rather than relying solely on consultants. In addition, the workshop identified conditions needed for server and staff maintenance, with initial financing potentially coming from the Green Climate Fund, and ongoing support and oversight from the Ministry of Climate Resilience, the Environment and Renewable Energy. The portal would require Grenadian expertise to manage and update, addressing the technical capacity needed for long-term sustainability. With climate information champions, such portals help fill in a gap for efficient uptake and use of local knowledge for climate policymaking and adaptation planning28,29.